2.5/5 ★ – Lammy's review of LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham.

Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham + DLC post-plat review - IDK how they made a Lego game a true slog to get through, but they did. Lego Batman 3 is, well, a Lego game, made by Traveler's Tales and released in 2014. It's definitely less of a "Batman" game and more a "Justice League" game, to be honest. The plot is kicked into motion by noted Superman villain Brainiac capturing the leaders of 6 of the 7 Lantern Corps before setting his sight's on Earth's own Green Lantern. Batman, Superman, and an assortment of DC Heroes and Villains team up to stop him... at least until the story entirely derails into a simple tour of the home planets of the aforementioned Lantern Corps. Lego games with original stories are not famed for their complexity or depth, but this one is probably the worst I've played. Like, I can't even say it's barely held together, and both previous Lego Batman games AND the first Lego Marvel Super Heroes game, released before this title, showed that they can put together a story that functions if they really wanted to. Gameplay follows the same tried and true Lego formula of the other pre-Skywalker Saga games, including the more modern staple of an open world to explore outside of the 16 dedicated story missions. Those story missions, outside of their narrative, are generally fun, nothing mindblowing but pretty par for the course at this point in series history. The open world segments, though, are a massive step down from previous entries. Most of it takes place on the Lantern planets, but they chose to have those areas presented with an awkward top down camera with perspective centered on the exact middle of the sphere, which makes movement jarring and can cause radical direction shifts if you move far enough off center frame to trigger camera motion. It's honestly quite bad, probably their worst ever open world attempt, and its disappointing coming after they nailed this so thoroughly in 2012's Lego Lord of the Rings. The character roster is expansive and well designed, with most characters having at least some use case in the collect-a-thon (the exceptions here are the odd cameos by Kevin Smith and Conan O'Brien). The same is not to be said for the vehicles, which make up about 30 slots of the full roster but can only be used in one small part of the open world. The DLC levels are neat short snippets of larger adventures like Suicide Squad (the bad one) or early seasons of Arrow, each coming bundled with an assortment of characters from their respective universe that are again cool but inessential. Luckily, the PS4 version of the game generally includes these bundled. That said, this is like a 5/10 game, and I don't recommend checking it out unless you're a Lego game completionist. Everything the game does is done better by Lego games released before them AND after them, making it one of the few complete missteps in TT's humble but generally solid box of bricks.